5 'Sattelites' Passed Within 10 minutes, Different Directions

Last night while out having a smoke break I watched the sky for 10 minutes and it seemed that every second object was travelling across the sky. Usually, I would spot the odd 'sattelite' which moves slow and steady across the sky, but last night was exceptional. Five different objects, travelling different directions withing 10 minutes, it really stood out as being a strange event and both me and my brother were quite excited about it.

Was this possible that each one was a sattelite and that many can pass in such a short time? I live in Belfast (NI) and the event was around 8.10pm. This is my first post here could anyone provide a few answers?


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I wasn't sure what forum to place this in please move as appropriate.

[edit on 13-3-2008 by BigC2012]

yes its entirely possible

Here's map of object tracked by NASA in orbit




Not all object have the same orbit. Some move fast, some slow, some dont, some can even change their orbit.

Sounds like a slow night to me lol.

Nothing at all strange about that... Mark Roazhar did a good job explaining it.

yeah. out here in western michigan, right off the lake, you can see alot more than that in 10 minutes. pretty slow nite imo.

This is probably what you saw. A list of 6 satellite passes seen from Belfast on the 12th right around 8:00PM. All fairly high in the sky too, and all brighter than magnitude 4.5.
Cosmos 1222 Mag 3.7 Peak 7:53 Direction WNW
Cosmos 1271 Rocket Mag 4.0 Peak 7:57 Direction WSW
Genesis I Mag 4.0 Peak 7:59 Direction NNW
Cosmos 2360 Rocket Mag 3.6 Peak 8:01 Direction NE
Cosmos 1271 Mag 3.6 Peak 8:02 Direction E
Aureole 2 Rocket Mag 3.3 Peak 8:02 Direction SSE

It is also possible to use nasa's jtrack to check out what sats are nearby or just passed
science.nasa.gov...

this is also a good site
www.n2yo.com...

Geez, we've managed to litter the space around our little blue marble as badly as we've littered the marble itself. It's unfortunate that we can't clean up the excess boosters and stuff. No wonder NASA worries when we send people up there. Who wants a 12-story tank in the head while they're out spacewalking?

Its amazing the aliens get through!

Originally posted by Sleuth
Geez, we've managed to litter the space around our little blue marble as badly as we've littered the marble itself. It's unfortunate that we can't clean up the excess boosters and stuff. No wonder NASA worries when we send people up there. Who wants a 12-story tank in the head while they're out spacewalking?

Actually the terminator teather aims to clean up space junk
www.space.com...

And dont forget its not just NASA playing up there...
www.space.com...
as this (old) list shows some of the countries responsible for junk in space.

Here are some other intresting stats (accurate as of a few years ago)
Only about 6/7% of tracked objects (about 13000 of em) are satellites of some sort, the rest is junk.
Space junk is growing about 5% per year
Rocket bodies only account for about 19% of space junk

The US project west ford purposly released hundreds of millions of copper needles during the 60s - a project that failed but left a vast ammount of space debris.
www.damninteresting.com...

and finally 2% of tracked junk has no known origin!

reply to post by freakyclown

Hey, cool links. Thanks for the info. I had no idea about this stuff.

[edit on 3/14/08 by Sleuth]